PLAYING GOD HAS CONSEQUENCES. Jake Wood has it made. He is a tough homicide detective with a partner who's like a brother, and he's about to marry the girl of his dreams. Then Jake learns a close friend is missing and travels to South America in search of him. After a freak accident in the Amazon Rainforest, Jake wakes up in the hospital--eighteen months later. Long presumed dead, he discovers his fiancée is married and pregnant, his house was sold, his job is gone, and his partner transferred to another city to become lead detective on a serial killer case. Jake buys a cabin in the woods and tries to leave the world behind, until his home is broken into and he discovers he was targeted--but why? When Jake's former partner requests his aid in catching the Blood Eagle Killer, he offers to help find whoever is behind Jake's recent trouble. This leads to Fortech Industries, a pharmaceutical company secretly researching a way to create an immortal gene. Now they intend to destroy their only error--Jake Wood--who has become something more than human.
Science need not be dull and bogged down by jargon, as Richard Dawkins proves in this entertaining look at evolution. The themes he takes up are the concepts of altruistic and selfish behaviour; the genetical definition of selfish interest; the evolution of aggressive behaviour; kinshiptheory; sex ratio theory; reciprocal altruism; deceit; and the natural selection of sex differences. 'Should be read, can be read by almost anyone. It describes with great skill a new face of the theory of evolution.' W.D. Hamilton, Science
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The story of modern medicine and bioethics—and, indeed, race relations—is refracted beautifully, and movingly.”—Entertainment Weekly NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM HBO® STARRING OPRAH WINFREY AND ROSE BYRNE • ONE OF THE “MOST INFLUENTIAL” (CNN), “DEFINING” (LITHUB), AND “BEST” (THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER) BOOKS OF THE DECADE • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS • WINNER OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE HEARTLAND PRIZE FOR NONFICTION NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Entertainment Weekly • O: The Oprah Magazine • NPR • Financial Times • New York • Independent (U.K.) • Times (U.K.) • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • Kirkus Reviews • Booklist • Globe and Mail Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of. Over the decade it took to uncover this story, Rebecca became enmeshed in the lives of the Lacks family—especially Henrietta’s daughter Deborah. Deborah was consumed with questions: Had scientists cloned her mother? Had they killed her to harvest her cells? And if her mother was so important to medicine, why couldn’t her children afford health insurance? Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.
We fear pandemics but what if a pandemic made you immortal? Book 1 in the series is FREE! Dr Donna Rigden is fed up with her job. When she loses the most important person in her life, she makes plans to start over. When this falls through, she resigns - big mistake. Donna is now on Forrest's hit list. Convinced to make a move, Donna refuses to leave the US without visiting her parents and grandparents graves. Ambushed at the cemetery, she's shot and wakes up on her way to the UK. This was not what Donna had in mind. Richard Triplet rescues Donna, but wants more from her than she's willing to give. Feeling trapped and desperate, she turns to a new friend for comfort. Sir Richard, Donna's new employer showers her with luxury and makes her an offer she can't refuse. Once she's signed the contract, he asks her to use her medical expertise to commit murder. Donna's world is turned upside down. Donna must make a life changing choice. Once made, there's no going back. Was it the right choice? Death strikes! Sam, the infirmary's doctor, is ordered to give his patient an untested drug. Sam knows the drug is either a cure or a curse, but goes against his patient's wishes. Will he stand by his Hippocratic Oath or cave and follow Sir Richard's orders? Immortality Gene? What about Sir Richard? How does he fit into this equation? What's his motivation? Sir Richard Triplet is a member of a secret society, who operates in the grey area on the edge of the law. This makes him a target for religious fanatics and conspiracy theorists, but Sir Richard knows a secret and has his own agenda. He knows, in the year 7141, the Earth will be destroyed by an apocalyptic collision with a rogue planetoid. This scale of cataclysm will destroy all life on earth - no room in the aftermath - even for a dystopian civilization. Should Sir Richard be concerned? It's not his problem - right? He'll be dead and gone by then. Maybe - maybe not. Sir Richard has a plan, already in action. One of the key elements in his plan is to manipulate the mechanisms of life and greatly extend the human lifespan. Does Sir Richard's quest to live forever offer our happy ever after? Let's re-evaluate this situation. If you were to become immortal would you feel more inclined to worry about an event taking place thousands of years into the future? I would be, but what about the ethical and social implications of immortality? What about overpopulation, living space and the diminishing food supply? What about the wars waged to control this miracle, and the all-important biblical phrase: Genesis 6:3: "And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years." 'Immortality Gene' is the first book in the 'A Vested Interest' series. It's based on advanced technology, currently under development. 'Immortality Gene' covers the development of a genetically engineered virus. Along the way the series deals with corporate jealousy at its highest levels, greed, spite, vengeance, nanotechnology, medicine, murder, mystery, love and betrayal, and, of course, the very essence of life itself. The Series This full length novel, book one sets the stage for a series involving: romance suspense science fiction mystery action comedy Paranormal wolves do play a part in the series but no vampires (yet). Immortality Gene is a unique blend of thriller, romance and science fiction. If you like books by Michael Crichton, Danielle Steel and Dan Brown, stories combining complex plots, compelling characters, and scientific explanation, then you'll love Immortality Gene. Be warned - this first e-book is long (780+ pages) but usually free!
“I’m something like sixty-thousand years old, and I’ve probably thought more about my own death than any living being has thought about any subject, ever. I used to be unduly preoccupied with what might constitute a “good death”, although interestingly, this has always been an after-the-fact analysis. What I mean is, following a near-death experience, I’ll generally perform a quiet review of the circumstances and judge whether that death would have been objectively good, by whatever metric one uses for that kind of thing. I’m not nearly that self-reflective while in the midst of said near-death experience. Facing death, the predominant thought is always not like this.” A disease threatening the lives of everyone—human and non-human—has been loosed upon the world, by an arch-enemy Adam didn’t even know he had. That’s just the first of his problems. Adam’s also in jail, facing multiple counts of murder, at least a few of which are accurate. He may never see the inside of a courtroom, because there remains a bounty on his head—put there by the aforementioned arch-enemy—that someone is bound to try to collect while he’s stuck behind bars. Meanwhile, Adam’s sitting on some tantalizing evidence that there might be a cure, but to find it, he’s going to have to get out of jail, get out of the country, and track down the man responsible. He can’t do any of that alone, but he also can’t rely on any of his non-human friends for help, not when they’re all getting sick. What he needs is a particularly gifted human, who can do things no other human is capable of. He knows one such person. He calls himself a fixer, and he’s Adam’s—and possibly the world’s—last hope. That’s provided he believes any of it. Immortal: Last Call is the sixth book in the Immortal Novel Series, and also the end of a long journey for one immortal man.
Nearly four decades ago Richard Dawkins published The Selfish Gene, famously reducing humans to “survival machines” whose sole purpose was to preserve “the selfish molecules known as genes.” How these selfish genes work together to construct the organism, however, remained a mystery. Standing atop a wealth of new research, The Society of Genes now provides a vision of how genes cooperate and compete in the struggle for life. Pioneers in the nascent field of systems biology, Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher present a compelling new framework to understand how the human genome evolved and why understanding the interactions among our genes shifts the basic paradigm of modern biology. Contrary to what Dawkins’s popular metaphor seems to imply, the genome is not made of individual genes that focus solely on their own survival. Instead, our genomes comprise a society of genes which, like human societies, is composed of members that form alliances and rivalries. In language accessible to lay readers, The Society of Genes uncovers genetic strategies of cooperation and competition at biological scales ranging from individual cells to entire species. It captures the way the genome works in cancer cells and Neanderthals, in sexual reproduction and the origin of life, always underscoring one critical point: that only by putting the interactions among genes at center stage can we appreciate the logic of life.
Candidate gene based studies have identified a handful of aberrant CpG DNA methylation events in prostate cancer (Brooks et al. 1998; Yegnasubramanian et al. 2004). However, large scale DNA methylation profiles have not been examined for normal prostates or prostate tumors. Additionally, the mechanisms behind these DNA methylation alterations are unknown. In this thesis, I describe the results of my efforts to better understand these previously unexplored areas of biology. For the study presented in this thesis, I quantitatively profiled 95 primary prostate tumors and 86 healthy prostate tissue samples for their DNA methylation levels at 26,333 CpGs representing 14,104 gene promoters by using the Illumina HumanMethylation27 platform. When the profiles of the prostate tissue samples were compared, I observed a substantial number of tumor-specific DNA methylation alterations. A 2-class Significance Analysis of this dataset revealed 5,912 CpG sites with increased DNA methylation and 2,151 CpG sites with decreased DNA methylation in tumors (FDR
A Best Book of 2021 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Time, and The Washington Post The bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs returns with a “compelling” (The Washington Post) account of how Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues launched a revolution that will allow us to cure diseases, fend off viruses, and have healthier babies. When Jennifer Doudna was in sixth grade, she came home one day to find that her dad had left a paperback titled The Double Helix on her bed. She put it aside, thinking it was one of those detective tales she loved. When she read it on a rainy Saturday, she discovered she was right, in a way. As she sped through the pages, she became enthralled by the intense drama behind the competition to discover the code of life. Even though her high school counselor told her girls didn’t become scientists, she decided she would. Driven by a passion to understand how nature works and to turn discoveries into inventions, she would help to make what the book’s author, James Watson, told her was the most important biological advance since his codiscovery of the structure of DNA. She and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. The development of CRISPR and the race to create vaccines for coronavirus will hasten our transition to the next great innovation revolution. The past half-century has been a digital age, based on the microchip, computer, and internet. Now we are entering a life-science revolution. Children who study digital coding will be joined by those who study genetic code. Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? What a wonderful boon that would be! And what about preventing depression? Hmmm…Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues and, with her collaborator Emmanuelle Charpentier, won the Nobel Prize in 2020. Her story is an “enthralling detective story” (Oprah Daily) that involves the most profound wonders of nature, from the origins of life to the future of our species.
